don't know if I should start a new thread or just ask it here. Anyway, got a few related questions
If your goal is to prevent infection in the first place, running a scan won't do that
will something like ClamXav Sentry help prevent infection? and what would be the recommended folders to keep under watch? I've got Downloads, Mail, Applications (if I install unidentified stuff by temporarily disabling Gatekeeper, it would pop up here, so just a precaution), and finally Dropbox and Google Drive, two folders that could basically be opened and edited through almost any device anywhere. I used to have three free AV programs, then saw the countless posts on these forums, and decided to just stick to ClamXav, for a peace of mind, just in case. Plus, I've been planning for a long time to run Windows 7 on bootcamp, basically as a backup for emergencies and stuff (and, well, for games), and didn't want to risk having any already infected viruses
Next, more importantly, can simply inserting or opening the contents of a USB somehow allow any malware present to infiltrate/infect my Mac (or any one of those many "user accounts"). I got this question because something similar happened to me. No passwords were requested for when I inserted the USB
This happened about five months ago, never happened again, so I'm just asking this more out of curiosity. I very often inserted a USB of my friend's into my Mac since we were in the same group project, and whenever I inserted it, my Mac starts to get somewhat laggy (don't know the exact word for it)
Things I remember from then:
- My Mac would get laggy, whatever I do, For eg if I click the Apple icon on the top left, it would take a few seconds for the drop down menu to open, same with any of the other icons on the menu bar, never takes this long for the drop down menu to open at any other times
- when I try to open the MS Word document of our project (from my Mac HD), the spinning beach-ball would just keep on spinning, the document would never load, and when I right-click on the MS Word it shows "App not responding"
- finally, once when the USB was still inserted and the project document didn't open, I left it like that, and the laptop went to sleep. When I woke it again, and it requested the password to login, my keyboard wasn't working. none of the keys were working, the caps lock key didn't light up when clicked. But weirdly enough, the trackpad was working. I had to power it off using the Power button, and took off the USB, everything worked fine again. Once again, this has never happened before (or after), just this once when the USB was in. That was the last time I used it on my Mac
Other relevant info
- I've been using this Mac for over a year now, never had any of these issues at any other times, except when this god **** USB was inserted
- my friend said the USB name was in Chinese, and despite OSX supporting Chinese the name was displayed in weird signs and random letters
- I've been using MS Office, especially Word very often in the last 8 months or so, and never had these issues (except for minor one time crashes which I never worried about much), except EVERY time this USB was inserted. Also once, just after removing the USB and restarting the Mac to get rid of the lag, I tried to open that same Word document which hadn't worked a minute ago with the USB inserted, and it opened, worked fine!
- If this USB had some malware that somehow affected the MS Office "user account" (I don't know if that makes any sense), what was with the keyboard issue I had? Once again, this keyboard issue is something I've never had
- And finally, I was on Snow Leopard at that time
Thanks for taking your time to read all of that
Any idea what was causing this? I'm convinced it had something to do with the USB, I've inserted it in my Mac more than enough times to notice it